My Journey to the Green(ish) Life

About Me

It’s All Relative

Kindred Spirits

384,206 hits

Become a Green(ish) Girl (or Boy)

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 57 other followers

A Short Note on Internet Courtesy

Over the past few days, I’ve been getting multiple, extremely negative rants from an anonymous (how convenient) commenter on a blog post I wrote a while ago promoting a dear friend’s photo project. From what I gathered, the ranter didn’t agree with her project and felt that a random blog (mine) was the proper forum for airing abusive grievances and attempting to start a flame war with me (while patting themselves on the back for their own photographic successes).

While I think the internet is a wonderful tool for connecting with people, it has also unfortunately become disconnecting in the way people think it’s ok to treat each other from behind the veil of the computer screen. These are human beings on the other end. People with hopes and dreams, troubles and triumphs, but most importantly – feelings. If you are posting something that is so vile that you can’t even assign your real name to it, you may need to step back and assess whether it’s something that needs to be said at all. And if you can’t be adult enough to make that decision, I have every right to censor your comments from my blog. Just like I have every right to say what I want on it. That’s what makes it MY blog.

And on another note, if you have a legitimate disagreement with something I post on here, something that is my own opinion, then feel free to comment on those posts. It has happened before and I have responded to it maturely. I welcome a difference in opinion, actually. But to go into hysterics over a post that is simply me talking about a friend’s project – well you must realize that you’re barking up the wrong tree. For example, if you were strongly offended by an exhibit in a museum, the logical place to complain would be with the museum’s management office (or the artists themselves, if that is an option). But if you were to overhear a stranger at a bar randomly talking about that exhibit, you wouldn’t march over to them and start screaming about how awful the artwork was or start demanding that THEY somehow explain what the artist meant by it, now would you?

In short, be mature, be accountable. And especially, don’t be an asshole.